Topic > Repressed Memory: The Effect of Lack of Information

Imagine having the memory of a very traumatic event that resurfaces in your mind after having forgotten it for twenty years. This is what happened to Eileen Franklin in 1989 when she had recovered what is called a repressed memory of her father, George Franklin, killing her friend in 1969, which eventually led to her father getting a prison sentence life sentence (Beaver, 1996). . A repressed memory is a memory that is not forgotten, but it is a memory of something traumatic that is blocked and not recovered unless triggered by something. Although his descriptions of the event were very vivid, describing colors and sounds, most of what he described could be proven inaccurate. Some of what she described was information misreported in newspapers that she had likely read or been told about in the past. This is an example of the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect occurs when someone is deceived by information about an event they witnessed and has an effect on how they remember that event later. This is just one example of how the misinformation effect can change the way an event is described. The study of the misinformation effect dates back to the 1970s with an experiment by Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues (Loftus, Miller and Burns, Semantic Integration of Verbal Information In a Visual Memory, 1978). The experiment involved participants being shown a series of slides featuring a car stopping at a stop sign and then turning and hitting a pedestrian. Participants were then asked if another car had passed the red Datsun while it was stopped at the red stop sign – this would be the control group. Another group of participants was asked the same question with the words “stop sign” replaced by the words “yield sign”, which… in the center of the paper… explains why the misinformation effect occurs according to some of the most important in this field. In conclusion, the misinformation effect occurs when someone is deceived by information about an event they witnessed and it has an effect on how they remember that event later. This phenomenon can occur in everyday life with the smallest things that don't matter, but it can also affect how an eyewitness remembers an event, which could lead to the conviction of an innocent person. While this has happened often in the past and still happens today, numerous measures have been taken to prevent this from happening, from educating people to creating DNA tests. This problem will probably never be completely solved, but the more we learn about the effect of misinformation, the better it will be for people in the future..